What’s the best sex gadget on the market?
Most sex therapists say your imagination, closely followed by your tongue (or their own patented tongue extension or finger fiddler). I say, Fresh Drop poo odour remover (MOTTO: ‘A fresh drop before you go and nobody will ever know’). The right setting is important for sex, particularly for women. You can clean the sheets and dim the lighting all you like but if you’ve just coiled off a code brown in the master en suite, there’s no way she’ll be in the mood until the pong’s gone. One drop; that’s all it takes. I don’t have shares in this company, but I’m so impressed with it, I’ve plugged it twice. Once you’ve got rid of the smell, I recommend a generous smearing each of Dr Phil’s Miracle Man Milk and Luscious Lady Lube (gift pack available).
Do Dr Phil’s Miracle Man Milk and Luscious Lady Lube really exist?
No. If you need a lubricant that’s easy to use (and won’t destroy a condom), try Replens or Liquid Silk. KY Jelly is a bit gooey for my taste. Other condom-safe lubricants include egg whites, any water-based lubricants and good old-fashioned spit and saliva. Not terribly romantic but in the heat of the moment, drooling or gobbing on your partner’s parts hits the spot for some folks. Lubricants to avoid if you want to withdraw with your condom/relationship intact include baby oil, baby poo, body or hand lotion, massage oil, mineral oil, petroleum jelly, alcohol gel, suntan lotion, vegetable oil and Deep Heat (don’t even think about it).
Do perpendicular penile piercings hurt?
I should imagine they do smart a bit to start with, yes. The magic cross is about as extreme as body piercing gets, involving both horizontal (ampallang) and front to back (apadravya) piercing of the glans (the bit that looks like a cherry). Whether it looks like a cherry after two metal rods are stuck through it is a moot point, but generally a magic cross takes about six months to heal, even in the best hands, before you can fully experience the pleasure of internal penis stimulation and your partner can enjoy those tiny metal dumb-bells rubbing up and down the uvula/vulva/G spot/prostatic ridge/Ben and Jerry’s Honeynut Crunch.
Do you favour open or closed swinging?
Most swinging ends in tears, either because some people are more up for it than others, some people thought they were up for it but really didn’t enjoy it, and someone doesn’t get picked at all (or, just as insulting, gets picked last). Bastards.
If I had to choose again, I’d probably go for closed swinging, where several couples meet together under the pretence of rehearsing for a village pantomime, and trade partners before returning to the person they came with. This at least gives you the reassurance of knowing roughly who you’ll be playing with and, in theory, there should be no plump, white, ginger person prompting himself left of stage while everyone else is having fun. And if it all goes pear-shaped, you at least have someone familiar to moan to on the way home.
Open swinging is far more risky, because anyone could proposition you, including the anally retentive IT enthusiast, or everyone could ignore you, leaving you on your own in the corner playing Kerplunk. Which isn’t that bad a game, as it happens … so long as you wear a condom.
What are the best party tricks to play with a very long penis?
You’re asking the wrong person. However, I have been on enough rugby tours to see a pint mug filled to the brim with just one set of bollocks (it looked like a claustrophobic squid). And a long enough penis can poke through a hole in a front pocket and appear above the top edge: ‘That’s my spare one.’ How we all laughed. For a dangly scrotum, you can bring a testicle right up, under the trouser line and then out over the belt line. It looks like a tense, angry and shockingly misplaced growth, but I’m not sure it’s very good for your sperm count. And you can still be done for indecent exposure.
Do people really fall backwards whilst wallpapering the ceiling?
All the time. If someone’s brave enough to come up to casualty with something stuck in their rectum, the least we can do is take their explanation at face value and with a straight face. One of the most important lessons I teach to medical students is how to hold it all together when a self-experimenter comes in. Laugh it off in the mess if you must, and keep a copy of the X-ray in your education folder, but we’re here to help, not to judge.
Human development is fascinating. As we grow, we switch effortlessly from sticking things in our upper holes (mouth, nostrils, ears) to hiding them in our lower holes. Just as a big poo can give a pleasant sensation on the way out, so – apparently – can a solid object on the way in, particularly for men who have the added bonus of a prostate to stimulate. Butt-plugging is as old as the hills. In Surgical Applied Anatomy by Frederick Treves and Arthur Keith (published 1917), the authors recall removing a glass tumbler, a silver matchbox, a deer horn and an umbrella handle. Didn’t they do well.
Take a wander (and wonder) round a medical school museum and you’ll find an ancient ‘foreign bodies’ section, in between the kidney stones and the Elephant Man. As a student, I came across a pre-war door handle with the label attached: ‘an unmarried man of forty-two admitted that the introduction of the handle was intended to produce an erotic sensation.’ Such honesty should be rewarded. The most common response to delicate enquiries is, ‘I don’t want to talk about it’, which is fair enough.
But the face-breaker is invariably when someone tries a fantastically implausible plausible explanation. In 1983, a World Medicine article by Dr Weston-Davies cited a man with a bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchup in his rectum who claimed he’d lost his door keys and was climbing through the pantry window when he also lost his foothold. A brilliant alibi, and he might have got away with it had there not been a condom on the ketchup bottle. (Note: A condom on a ketchup bottle isn’t a bad shout. It a) allows it to slip in more easily; b) prevents ketchup dispersal that is easily confused with rectal bleeding; and c) allows you to safely eat the ketchup, which we now know to be excellent for your prostate.)
Then there’s the retired squadron leader who might actually have been telling the truth. He apparently used a Bofors anti-aircraft shell, circa 1945, to pop his prolapsed piles back in and he let go of the end in error. The surgeon summoned the bomb squad as well as the anaesthetist, and the patient escaped with shell shock.
The largest published collection of rectal foreign bodies (Drs Busch and Starling, Surgery, 1986) mercifully did not include any animals. There was the odd, rather obvious, ‘vibrating abdomen syndrome’ from a Duracell-powered toy. But top of the pops were glass or ceramics (fifty-six assorted jars, bottles, light bulbs and tubes, but not all from the same person). Fruit and veg were also popular (we tell you to take five portions a day, but not how to take them), as were wooden handles and body sprays (‘Men can’t help acting on Impulse’). My favourite category was ‘miscellaneous’, which included a tobacco pouch, a frozen pig’s tail, a salami and an ice pick.
How do you remove a light bulb from the rectum?
You can’t just wait for it to go out. First, you look at the X-ray to make sure it hasn’t burst. Then you show the X-ray to a sweetly naïve nursing student who says: ‘How did he swallow a light bulb?’ (And it is nearly always a ‘he.’ I’ve never seen a woman with a rectal foreign body that she put there herself. Women tend to use properly designed butt-plugs on each other, which have a flared end and so they can’t disappear.)
Bailey and Love’s Short Practice of Surgery, first published seventy-five years ago, is the fount all knowledge:
The variety of foreign bodies that have found their way into the rectum is hardly less remarkable than the ingenuity displayed in their removal. A turnip has been removed per anum by the use of obstetric forceps. A stick firmly impacted has been withdrawn inserting a gimlet into its lower end. A tumbler, mouth looking downwards, has been extracted by filling the interior with a wet plaster of Paris bandage …
It makes you wish What’s My Line? was still on the telly.
Low-watt bulbs are better for the environment but not for your bowel, on a
ccount of the complex shape. If the cap faces outwards, just connect to a standard lamp and pull gently. If you’re feeling naughty, plug the lamp in and switch on first. The rectum makes a most unusual lamp-shade, but it’s never so funny when it’s read out in court. If the bulb faces outwards, cover it in strips of paper mâché, allow them to set, break the bulb and gently withdraw with plenty of lube.
Who owns the X-ray?
Technically it’s the hospital, but you could offer to pay for a copy. You could also ask for it not to appear in a review of the world’s literature or the Sunday Times colour supplement. Anuses may be as loose as ever, but the rules on patient confidentiality have tightened up over the years. In the old days, doctors could merrily take your X-rays and hilarious anecdotes around the conference, after-dinner and daytime-TV circuits, without your permission. The only rule was that individuals couldn’t be identified. Unlikely, as one light bulb in the rectum looks much the same as another.
These days, the General Medical Council and all reputable medical journals like you to get written consent to use stories or photos from living patients, even if they can’t be identified. This has rather laid waste to the publication of rectal foreign body round-ups in the press. ‘Hello Mr Jones, Dr Hammond here. Remember that time when you lost your keys and you were climbing in through the pantry window? Yes, well, I’m filling in for Dr Hilary on GMTV and I wondered if … ?’ A few brave after-dinner medics are still doing the rounds, and often protect themselves by anecdote-swapping (claiming things that happened to colleagues, happened to them and vice versa). And in any case, when you’re half-way through the great tobacco pouch mystery, it’s very rare for someone to put his hand up and shout: ‘Hey, that’s me, that is!’
Is it possible to whip someone in the context of a loving relationship?
Yes, but only after they’ve taken the rubbish out. If you’ve been together for a few years or more and the sex routine has become as mechanical as the toddler/dog/recycling routine, it’s not easy to suggest something a bit off-piste. Which I guess is why people pay to be whipped by strangers. However, it’s a lot cheaper (and less likely to end up in the tabloids) if you can encourage your partner to do it. If it’s a desire you’ve been hiding for many years, it’s really hard to just come out with it. Communication experts recommend the old third-person ploy: ‘I bumped into Bob the other day, Hadn’t seen him for years. He really enjoys being whipped.’ ‘Have you taken the rubbish out?’ Works every time. Failing that, drop ‘whipme’ into Sex Scrabble.
How do I tell if my partner is dominant, submissive or not interested?
It’s probably best to ask. Some people who are dominant in the day job (politicians, judges, doctors, priests, teachers, referees) like to dress up in nappies and be humiliated in private. Psychoanalysts have had a field day postulating why an individual might get into sexual domination and submission, and how it differs from assault. According to sex therapist William Henkin, a lot of couples get involved in power struggles, where each tries to control the other without ever resolving the problems. S&M provides a safe and consensual environment to work through these issues.
Some theorists claim a liking for S&M is all in the genes, others go for the ‘something in childhood playing out in later life’ theme; a bearded nanny, a sadistic teacher, an over-protective mother or holidays on the farm. There is no evidence I can find that those who practise consensual kinky sex are any more likely to have been abused as children than those who stick to two minutes of hide the sausage and a good book. Neither do they seem to have been damaged or destroyed by any other traumatic event. They just enjoy the feeling of buttock on willow. And vice versa.
None of this is new. Water sports (golden showers, urophilia, whatever) date back to Ancient Egypt and were common in the court of Louis IV. Fellatio on park benches overlooking the Serpentine is very common in nineteenth-century photos, but you’d struggle to get away with it today (TIP: Use the picnic blanket). Anything you could possibly imagine (and plenty you can’t) can be found on an ancient Japanese woodcut or in a French cartoon. And what’s the Cerne Abbas Giant doing with a huge erection and a knobbly club in his hand?
For 5,000 years, every society has realised that controlling sexual relationships is the best way to discipline people, and there have always been people prepared to challenge that view. The tighter the morals, the wider the rebellion. In Victorian England, when men were supposed to limit their animal desires to once a month and never during pregnancy or periods, prostitution, flagellation, boy brothels and S&M pornography were popular, and the dressing ring was born – a metal hoop inserted through the glans to increase sexual stimulation and secure the penis to the leg of the trousers when dressing; also known as a ‘Prince Albert.’ But it wasn’t all fun, fun, fun. Syphilis killed thousands. Condom, condom, condom …
My granny used to say: ‘Pleasure is a two-way street but your anus doesn’t have to be.’ Was she right?
Right again. In any one year, around twelve per cent of men and eleven per cent of women try anal sex, if only the once, and nearly ninety per cent manage to avoid it.
If you’re considering taking the plunge, the crucial starting point as with all sex is consent, and preferably even desire. If you don’t want to stick your penis in an anus, or be on the receiving end, then it’s unlikely to be a success. And never spring it on an unwitting partner with the old ‘Whoops, sorry, wrong hole!’ line.
If you both agree to give it a go, you should approach it with the same caution you would if you were driving the wrong way up a one-way street, in the dark … and blindfolded. It’s not uncommon to meet traffic coming the other way at great speed so put an old towel down and be prepared to bail out. If you haven’t dropped the kids off at the pool that day, you’re probably courting disaster.
If you have a lot of anal sex (or just once very roughly), then the sphincter can be damaged and the anus loses its ability to tell what’s passing through. So be gentle. Here’s what you need:
• Mutual consent and desire
• Time
• A time-out sign
• Empty-ish bowel
• An old towel
• Lubrication (lots of it and not the condom-dissolving kind)
• Finger first (just the one)
• A dental dam (for rimming or root canal work)
• A very firm but preferably not too huge erection (anything remotely soft won’t work)
• A condom (preferably extra strength)
• More lubrication
• A tentative nudge followed by a slow and gentle stroke
• A Plan B
• A sense of humour
How anyone manages such a technical procedure on a windswept common in the dark with a dark stranger is quite beyond me. The absolute minimum is a condom. Without one, it’s more likely to hurt, more likely to pass on infection (particularly hepatitis, gonorrhoea and HIV) and more likely that one of you will end up with a tide mark or corn on the cob. Some women say they enjoy a pleasant feeling of rectal fullness, some frankly don’t. Men get the double-whammy of rectal fullness and prostate stimulation.
The abundance of strap-on toys allows heterosexual couples to do some adventurous role-reversal (known humorously as ‘pegging’). The same rules apply but if you get the giggles, the sphincter will tighten and you probably won’t get anywhere near penetration. At least he’ll realise the intimate joy of kneeling with arse in the air and face asphyxiated in a pillow.
GAMES VERY FEW PEOPLE PLAY
Is docking possible without a foreskin?
Docking means different things in different contexts. Mooring your boat, arranging a space rendezvous, or having your dog’s tail trimmed should not be confused with its more modern interpretation (placing the glans of your penis into the foreskin on someone else’s). You could combine the two, I suppose, but you’d need to find a fairly liberated vet. Clearly, if you have no foreskin, you can only be the dono
r and not the recipient. It also helps if you’re on at least nodding acquaintance with your fellow dockers.
Does teabagging taste better with sugar?
Teabagging has yet to make it into the Scrabble Dictionary, but it surely won’t be long after its appearance in The Australian, the country’s premier broadsheet. On August 27, 2009, legal affairs correspondent Michael Pelly reported:
Australia’s supreme military disciplinary body has been ruled illegal by the High Court in a decision that has thrown military justice into turmoil. The government has been forced to rewrite the military justice system after the High Court blocked the prosecution of a leading seaman charged with indecent assault for placing his genitals on a sleeping colleague’s forehead – a practice known as ‘teabagging’.
The allegations were in any case refuted (‘There was no teabagging at Roma’s Motel, Carnarvon. Skylarking, yes. Teabagging, no.’) and there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t sign up either to the Australian Navy or visit what appears to be a very pleasant motel (www.motelcarnarvon.com.au/). Even better, when your partner lays down a paltry ‘tea’ during knackered Scrabble, think where your bingo bagging could lead? (A bingo is a seven-letter get out that earns an extra fifty on top of your teabagging).
Teabagging is not to everyone’s taste, although a sugary scrotum could make it marginally more palatable. The angle of the dangle is critical for success. Teabagging is safest with the recipient upright, when there is less risk of asphyxiation and more opportunity for escape. You can either close your eyes and hope it goes away, or open your mouth and hope for the best. It’s always worth asking before taking a whole testicle (and certainly two) in your mouth, as some men are more sensitive (and nervous) than others.
Sex, Sleep or Scrabble Page 20